personal history that it almost seemed to him as if they had been
intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar ground with him. Neither
as much as whispered the name of Reginald Clarke. Yet it was he, and the
knowledge of what he was to them, that linked their souls with a common
bond.




XIV


It was the third day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy
had increased. Ethel was sitting in a large wicker-chair. She restlessly
fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand.
Ernest lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between his hands, he
gazed into her eyes.

"Why are you trying so hard to make love to me?" the woman asked, with
the half-amused smile with which the Eve near thirty receives the homage
of a boy. There is an element of insincerity in that smile, but it is a
weapon of defence against love's artillery.

Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in the boy's eyes and the cry of the
blood pierces the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves and
loses.

Ethel Brandenbourg was listening, but the idea of love had not yet
entered into her mind. Her interest in Ernest was due in part to his
youth and the trembling in his voice when he spoke of love. But what